Ch. 7: The Shadow on the Choir
June now rolled in, balmy and lovely. It grew hot for a few days, and the wild roses were blooming all white and yellow like lemon meringue against green, and in the forests the mountain laurels broke into blossom of white and pale pink. Then the weather abruptly got cold and rainy as it usually did all through the first week of June, except it was already Flag Day. Pentecost weekend was a washout. Bell moped around the island in her dark-green raincoat, Forest pacing behind her with the umbrella. “Forest, when you saw the Stars on Christmas Eve, was it summer or winter?” she said suddenly. “Uh, it was another. Winter, I mean.” It was another Christmas Eve of long ago, and the Road was returning. “Except it wasn’t Christmas back then.” “Oh, right, Arheled did say something about it being around Noah’s time when the Stars rebelled, didn’t he? Funny to think Christmas has been embedded deep in the cycles of the World long before Christ was born. But was the Road returning every hundred years back then? I mean, from what he was saying to Brooke it seems the Road didn’t start doing that until—later.” “He said it was returning as long ago as the founding of the Tower.” “Oh yes, the world bent long before the Great Flood, silly of me. But Brooke seemed to think the Road was the Milky Way.” “Uh uh.” contradicted Forest. “He said it was the sign of the Road. Maybe the plane of the Milky Way galaxy is the plane of the Flat World before it was Bent.” “That would be really cool.” said Bell. “Wasn’t that just creepy, though, when the Wild Man said he could claim anything Brooke possessed?” “Fairies are like that, too.” “Oh yes,” said Bell pensively, leaning on one of the pine trees, “in the stories, you hear them exacting tolls like a summer day, or a name, or even a heart. I wouldn’t want to run into a fairy. Is Wild a fairy?” “Kevin called him an Elemental.” “Yes, but Kevin was insulting him. Just like Wild was calling him a firebaby.” “I don’t think he’s an Elemental.” Forest said slowly. “He’s…” He is earth, and stone, and many things; but he is more than those things. “If you go and complete that sentence in your head again, I’m gonna bop you one.” threatened Bell. “It’s not like I’m telepathic or something.” “He’s more.” blurted Forest. “He’s something more than what he’s made of. He’s venda.” “That’s what Arheled called himself.” “Yes, but different.” Forest stumbled on. “Wild is venda like Rugg Valley, eerie and wild and creepy, but Arheled is venda like…like imperishable crystal at the world’s end. High venda. You know?” “Yeah.” mused Bell. “I know.” Lara Midwinter leaned on her windowsill, gazing moodily out into the leaves of the green wet trees outside. The window was open and the cold raw air flowed around her, so refreshing after all the heat. Not that she minded the heat much—it was a relief in some ways after the Fell Winter—but she hated working in it. Even with air conditioning the ovens and stoves made it awful in back. Naked silver trees, limbs of grown crystal… She shook her head. In many ways last night’s dream had been one of the most disturbing yet. She had been in a forest, but a forest of glass, with branching treelike shapes more beautiful than any tree that grew upon the earth, and a dew of ice and diamond spangled them and gleamed upon them. The ground that they grew out of was a floor of solid mist, a pearly gleaming mist that drifted ankle-deep around the silver boots and fire-glass shoes of the two shining figures that paced through this grove. One was a man of silver pearl, his face glowing like moonlight made solid; the other was a woman, whose hair drifted loose about her as if it had no gravity, a luminous, molten golden-white; the glance of her eyes burned like a thrown lance of sunlight. Her gold flesh was as bright as if dipped in flame. “The child of Charosa is an ill shining to us.” said the silver lord. “Yes, Silmo, but Charosa has had more children than any of the other Wandering Stars (she said a word that sounded more like ‘alaplonto’ but that was what Lara understood it to mean). These all gleam most peacefully beyond the Bords of Brightness, content to be Lesser Stars.” the woman said. Her voice was fierce, almost scorching. “Mayhap might this one be no different.” “Aye, but hark thee, Urwendí, our son Angar the Dark has been speaking in riddles that the father is known to him, when not even our daughter can illumine the lend that enseeded it within her. During the week in which it must have been conceived, she was shone upon by at least a hundred lender.” He sighed. “I long for the purity of Valinoria, free of this mad lust that grips the heavens.” “Thou knowest what was said to them in their enplacing, by the Father Himself: Be fruitful and multiply, fill the heavens and populate the firmament, but meddle not beneath the heavens, nor mingle in affairs of earth; be thou for signs and for seasons, and for watching and singing, but never make thou war; or thou diest.” Silmo frowned. “So it is said, yet I think not such a meaning was intended. But as long as their consent is free, we can frown, but we cannot compel their wills, for fear of risking strife. And now no Star will take a wife, but shine into whatsoever walls are soft to him, and the lennaí are no better. It is a wonder if any walls remain hard at all in the firmament.” Urwendí made an impatient gesture. “It is a mark of the Shadow that darkens the Choir and makes its’ song poisonous to overhear, that such mad softness be so common. Lend or lenna, all are fearsome, their rays hard and their points sharp, even as they leave soft their walls to one another.” Silmo lowered his voice. “Arcturus has begun to forge weapons that will focus power and increase it. It is said he knows how to tap into the essence of the residue of Chaos. Angar is close to this, and their rays often blend. I do not know what this may mean.” The light of Urwendí’s eyes flashed with alarm. “Is he then planning to make war? Be he mad?!” “I know not. But thou knowest the doom of the Stars is also laid on us, when first thou reflected back my rays and took on flesh for love of me and I of thee. Thou knowest what the Lord of the Cosmos (he actually said Iluvala, but Lara heard it as that) said at our joining.” “How could I forget it?” Urwendí’s voice grew deep and serene, as if recalling another voice. “ ‘Since thou hast chosen to be incarnate in the heavens, be the fate of the heavens thy own fate as well. Measure out the days and watch upon the years, but meddle not on earth, and never make thou war.’ ” “None the less,” said the Lord of the Moon, “Kings we are of the lights of the heavens, and we cannot let this problem grow. We must confront Arcturus and lay our authority on him, and then must we pierce the doings of our son.” Lara remembered well the bleak, lead feeling she had had when she woke up. She did not need to know what they meant by the Shadow, for she felt it very clearly in herself: a careless, lead-like despair, “eat and drink and merrymake, for tomorrow we die.” It hadn’t helped any at Mass when Father Orlando’s replacement, an older heavy priest who always spoke as slowly as if about to fall asleep, forgot (intentionally, perhaps, as he also said “Sisters and brothers” instead of the Bibical vice versa) to sing the Gloria and Kyrie Elaison. Both were always sung in Latin at the 8:00 Sunday Mass. Not to mention omitting both the Confiteor and the Pentecost sequence; but the latter, it seemed, was under some sort of universal anathema as far as the US bishops were concerned, for Lara had never heard it sung anywhere. She remembered well the last part of the dream. She had passed quite suddenly from the crystal forest to an equally crystalline palace. The floor was transparent sky, while the walls were a mesh of crystal vines like a trellis of woven glass. Apparatus of silver wires and silver fashioned into bizarre and fantastic shapes cluttered the clear shelves and hung from a thousand filaments under the woven ceiling. Arcturus was there, bent over one device like twisted metal spaghetti, and flashes of silvery-blue power were passing from his hands into the device. How they came Lara did not see, but there they stood, the Lord and Lady of the Moon and Sun, burning silver and clear gold in the midst of that laboratory. Arcturus looked up and a flash of green light was startled out of him. Then he bowed deeply. “My lord the Moon, and my lady the Sun, welcome to the halls of Arcturus.” the Star-lord greeted. “Bandy not formaliness with thy soveriegns, Arcturus.” the scorching voice of Urwendí answered. “We have come to shine light into thy doings.” “I comprehend thee not.” “Oh, thou dost, thou dost indeed.” the Lord Silmo answered. “Why art thou bending weapons?” Arcturus seemed wary but not afraid. “I am preparing against that which is coming.” “Thou art foolish. None of the lights of Heaven will dare to make war, or even to quarrel, lest we trigger the doom and the curse that is laid into the Stars.” Silmo answered. And Arcturus said, “ I deem that fear no longer enough to face that which is coming. Think ye the Shadow on the Choir is a natural one, a result of the wearing and the weariness of Time? Nay, my Lord and Lady, evil walks the heavens.” Then Silmo said, “But it is madness to make weapons, for no matter what may come against us, if we go to war at all we will incurr the curse, for it is laid into our very natures, to transform within us into energy, into matter, and escape us, changing us from inside, till we are dead and our bright corpses take our places in the heavens.” And Arcturus said, “What then of the Evening Star? You know that in the last war against the Great Enemy he alone of all the lights of heaven descended to war, and overthrew the Winged Dragons themselves, even that black one so great three mountains broke under his fall. Yet no curse befell him.” And Silmo answered, “Thou know as well that he was not a Star, but a Mariner taken up into our midst, the Last Jewel of the Three upon his brow, bearing the Light that Was Before the Sun and Moon; and that his doom is the same as the Man in the Moon who tendeth the Rose: to meddle never in the affairs of Men, nor walk on Middle-earth. He was never reckoned among the Stars, but among Elves, and he does not share our curse.” Then Arcturus began to laugh. A queer shaky laughter, sounding as odd coming from his imposing form as if he had suddenly oinked. “I know the tale of our curse.” he said. “But has it never entered thy minds, my lords, that mayhap the curse is but a bogey-tale, to frighten us into the ways of peace?” And Urwendí bent her piercing eyes upon him, that glance so searing that not even the lord of Chaos had been able to bear it; and Arcturus dimmed and flickered under that stare. “Thou hast no fear of the curse.” she said thoughtfully. “Thou believest that thou canst defeat it. What hast thou pierced? Tell us, we bind thee, by the authority we bear as the Sun and Moon!” And Arcturus looked doubtfully upon them. “My lords, I do not dare.” he said slowly. “It is a possibility, but a dim one. I would not lay the burden of it upon you as well. If I alone possess it, I alone bear the blame if it should prove a false trail. If I am wrong, and the curse is all too real, then I will be the one who falls to it and not the Sun and Moon. If I fall, make Sophia shine in my place; her rays are young but steady beyond her wheelings. I say no more.” There was a pause as the Sun and Moon gazed at him. “So you think you have pierced a way to keep the curse from acting if you should go to war?” Silmo said. “And thus you have made yourself a sacrifice, that you should go to war for us, and suffer in your person the doom if your piercing is wrong. Your reasons are lofty, Arcturus, but I fear lest this become known. Keep thy secret to thyself, we thee bind.” “This will I, I so swear.” said Arcturus. At the back of her mind, as if she was seeing behind her head, Lara saw another chamber of webbed traceries with very similar devices, and standing in it a tall Star in black robes spangled with yellow, and his hair gave out no light. Another Star in strange violet robes, hair and form all wavering with violet light in his excitement as if uncertain which shape to retain, stood before him. “But my lord Angar, the possibility you suggest…it…it is fantastic! If such a thing is probable, it will put us in a position of unimaginable power!” he was exclaiming. “All the more reason why I want it investigated and developed.” the dark biting voice of Angar hissed. “I have much staked on this. My calculations are certain.” Then the room changed again, and yet again, and the devices of magic and science shifted position and form like shapes in a dream, and the person opposite Angar changed and shifted constantly; now a tall and haughty prince of Stars, now a cold lord in blue, now a great warrior with red hair who shone red and gold. Though the changes were countless, to each of them she knew, somehow, Angar was making the same revelation and making it seem as if none other knew. The whirling shapes grew stranger and stranger. Now she saw Lilac cutting lilacs off a bush which transformed into horrible little dragons as they fell to the ground; now Summer was opening her baby mouth and withering weather grew all around; two young but gigantic faces more like a girl and boy made ice, but she knew somehow they were more than ice, they were winter itself. Then she saw the boy Kevin who had tried to date her at work, but he was all on fire, and it was not harming him, and he wanted her to dance with him. “Come into my arms, lovely Lara, and the fire will be yours as well.” he was saying, and she wanted to so badly, but she was cold, and cold was in her, and he was beginning to frost over even as he spoke…. She had come slowly awake and found a cold wind was blowing in the window, and it was still dark out. She pillowed her chin in her arms now and sighed with exasperation: seeing tiny fragments of the picture was so difficult when you still didn’t have the whole thing. “Mom, when are we getting the dock out this year?” Forest asked at breakfast. “I’ve been hoping that now that your father is here, he’d get around to doing it…” said Mrs. Lake significantly, lifting her eyebrows at Hunter Light, who was reading the newspaper placidly at the far end of the table and paying no attention to what was going on around him. “I’ll get started.” he mumbled. “Yes, you said that before Memorial Day too, and Bell couldn’t have her friends over.” Mrs. Lake teased. She was keeping her old name, as the legal hassle of new ID and so on was more than they felt like dealing with right now. “Mom! You know perfectly well we had family over!” spluttered Bell. “Well, I do have today off from teaching,” Mr. Light said dubiously, so I may as well get it over with so a certain pretty woman will give me some peace.” This made Mrs. Lake blush and giggle, which made Bell laugh and Forest grin. They helped him pull the dock into the water, splashing about and getting their work clothes muddy. It had been beached on the grassy bank behind the barn. After a lot of splashing, swimming and shoving they had it in place and anchored, and Forest and Bell ran and jumped off it until their mom remembered they were supposed to be in school. Professor Light said a few tardys never hurt anyone. “Dad, take us rowing?” begged Bell, and Hunter glanced out at the lake and decided there weren’t too many motorboats out yet, so they got ready. The life vests were located at long last under the tarp in the garage, where they had no business being, and Mrs. Lake came out to kiss Hunter goodbye before going off to work. Then they were finally ready to go. “So, tell me,” said Hunter Light as he pulled at the oars, “who put the dock out while I was gone?” “Mom. Me.” said Forest. “Was he always like that?” Bell wanted to know. “Or is he just a retard?” She said it in a sweet way that rendered it almost into an endearment. “Well, Forest always was quiet,” Mr. Light said thoughtfully as he rowed around the island and into the Narrows. “But now I’m beginning to be almost afraid of him.” he finished with half a smile. “Why?” said Bell, amused. “When he does speak, what he says is—almost like a wise old man. He sees the heart of things.” They glided for a while, drifting on the small waves. “Ooh! I saw a big fish.” Bell exclaimed. “I wish we’d brought our tackle. But we never catch anything.” “Dad.” said Forest. “What happened to your machine?” Hunter Light put out the oars and rowed up to Summer Rock. “It’s still at the College.” he said. “It’s a strange thing. We’re still racking our brains trying to interpret that massive energy surge and what exactly is trapped in that machine. It’s big. Whatever we tapped is so powerful that if we can even understand it, it could revolutionize the astronomic field. What is it…how it works…if we could harness it…” “But what is it?” “I’m beginning to suspect some sort of cosmic ground-base.” Mr. Light said. “Some essential force that serves as principle for interstellar relations. The nature of gravity, perhaps, as well. All sorts of things would appear in a totally new light.” “Oh, come on, everyone knows what gravity is.” said Bell. “Do they?” said Hunter Light. “Philosophy is content to define it as the principle by which matter exerts a force on objects of mass; but that’s only what it is, not how it is. We still haven’t figured it out. Einstein mutters of curves in spacetime, while Planck shows us that at an atomic scale gravity itself is in question and all models—quantam, relativity, and even cosmic string—break down. Others propose particles called gravitons that are produced by attracting masses and which cause the gravitational fields. Sometimes I’m tempted to throw up my hands and say angels are doing it by telekinesis.” “That’s actually a philosophically viable hypothesis.” said Forest. “I mean, if telekinesis is a spiritual force acting on matter, wouldn’t it cut in at the very bottom level of matter, where scientific models no longer apply?” He leaned back on his seat, astounded at himself and feeling suddenly weak. “Wow.” said Bell. “You’re good.” “It’s true there are fundamental mysteries and analomies that no gravitational model can explain.” said Hunter. “Dark energy was one until recently; my trapped energy may have solved that problem, but it doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the dark flow.” “Now that sounds interesting.” remarked Bell. “Yes, well, it is. Recent studies of the spectra and redshift—that’s the position of the color in a spectrum, Forest, such as whether it’s on top or on bottom—of the galaxies indicate a steady velocity apart from the expansion of the universe. A velocity toward a particular part of the sky, between Vela and Centaurus constellations, as if the stars were draining in that direction. They’re still expanding outward in all directions, but are flowing toward this spot. We can’t explain it. Something outside the universe pulling them…or a river running through the sky, bearing everything with it…some cosmic force even stranger than my new energy…” He fell silent, still thinking. “Where does the Milky Way lie, with regards to this river?” asked Bell. “Odd you should mention that.” Hunter said with a start. “The region of what was known as the Great Attractor—that is, the source of the dark flow—lies in a small patch of sky between Centaurus and Vela, right in the path of the Milky Way.” The Road, Forest thought. They all veer along the Road. Kevin opened the door, and stepped into darkness. Not that this would have bothered him much. He was after all a creature of night, and the rooms in the middle of the house on Big Island were always kept shuttered, shrouded in a constant gloom. But this was different. This had a quality and feel in it that made his fiery soul shrink in on itself, shivering. Thick and tangible. He could almost hear it breathing. He slowed to a stop. Memories he had hoped forever buried were around him, of when a similar choking darkness had engulfed him, and when he came out, he was dragon. His teeth began to chatter. A voice spoke out of the darkness, ancient, soft, and deep as the foundations of time. There was a dreary sadness in it, and a dreadful weary mockery, a heavy levity; and Kevin fell upon his face. “If it isn’t the dragon-boy.” said the voice of the darkness. “Well, firebaby? Why do three of the Six walk unfettered through the Five Villages?” “Master, it—it’s not my fault.” Kevin said hastily. Dammit, how could anyone think with chattering teeth? “Brooke called up the Wild Man. I wasn’t ready. Her house is under the Road now.” Then the darkness really did laugh, a sound as empty and jarring as the crushing of stone. “Do the Three still stand above the house of the Hill, and does winterberry bloom about the dwelling of the Star? Does the Traveller stay hidden in her hall, or the Stream lie still in her bed?” “Master, Master,” Kevin babbled, “I can still d—d—d—“ “A stuttering dragon,” the darkness taunted, “who thinks he is God’s gift to Winsted’s women, yet who cannot trap two teenage girls. I need them. I want them. How can I walk without them within me?” “But, Master,” said Kevin, perking up a little, “the Road is powerful. And the Six stand under protections too great for us to breach. We fear the Gods, Master.” “The Gods are bowed with years in their paradise of dreams, and the Road alone connects them with the world they once ruled. I have watched them from the Void as they twiddled their great thumbs; they are no longer Lords of the World, they are ancient dreamers who have forgotten how to fight. Even bearing the Oppressor I threw down fivescore and ten. Do not fear them, little dragon. Fear me more.” And Kevin bowed and worshipped the Darkness. Forest dreamed he was flying. It was a queer sort of flight; he was hunched up in a crouch and hovering about five feet in the air; but by squeezing his brain—that’s what it felt like, as if his brain was a muscle and could be clenched—he found he could glide forward at a steady fate, about as fast as a bicycle, and steer by conscious direction of thought, like turning a handlebar in his mind. He buzzed forward, between parked cars, going up and over an opened door. The ground sloped and he willed himself—or squeezed himself—higher, till he could with some care clear the telephone wires and dodge treetops. Houses bumped by underneath him. It was almost like some kind of video game. Even as he thought this, he realised the ground was dropping away completely; houses and mountains suddenly shrinking to diorama size, and toy cities shrank to grids of dotted streets, and the land below him became almost like a relief map in full color, and slow huge clouds passed with ponderous majesty like mountainous ships underneath him. Now even these grew small, till the earth was curving and he saw only cotton wisps on wrinkled, webbed green, and on either side a vast deep blueness was opening out, gleaming with stars. Yet it seemed for a moment that a line ran out straight from the top of the curving globe, the cottoned air falling away to left and right: a line that flickered and was gone. Now with speed unthinkable the Earth spun away and vanished into a blue star, and then into nothing, as wheels and spirals of misted soft stars rotated slowly beneath him and fell away in their turn. Somehow he was aware of a vastness all around him, packed and drifted with the clumping stars, stars beyond stars and clouds beyond clouds: stars like the sand of the sea. He was floating, he realized now; moveless in the emptiness that was not completely Void, yet still the stars were moving, and reeling as they did; and then a great veering line flashed beneath him and became level, and he was standing on a road. It was made of silver paving-blocks and kerbed with lattices of a transparent gleaming substance, and it ran on before and behind, and yet it was far huger than what he saw of it. Like a glowing stripe along the crest of some submerged monster too vast to be comprehended, perhaps; or the long ridge of a towering mountain sheathed all in fog save for the ridge breaking out of it. And the paving-blocks were moving, they were flowing like a solid river though in such unison they seemed immobile, and the spirals of the galaxies were ponderously swinging around to follow it, so that the whole sky was flowing all as one. And as Forest’s mind, dazzled by the vastness of the spectacle, reeled and sped on with them, stars broke apart like mist and everything stood still. Deep, pure star-blue was all around him. In front of him it was lighter, like noon-blue in autumn, and it was curled into intricate shapes like transparent clouds. And then Forest gasped, for he saw all at once that it was solid like stone, but if stone then a stone so clear and transparent and utterly blue as to resemble rather air made hard and given shape. and he saw now that it was carved, in figures so slow and strange and complicated he knew at once that they were meanings, and meanings so elemental and fundamental that an eternity of staring would still leave him ignorant. A sound like ancient thunder, a weaving of syllables so massive and simple and so enormously powerful they cracked above his head and fell like stone upon his ears, broke out around him; and now he saw the blueness nearby was peopled with tremendous shapes. Shapes of majesty and grace like the sweeping limbs of ancient trees; shapes of stern power like kings hewn out of stone from the side of a mountain; shapes as beautiful and delicate as piled fountains of sprayed ice; and all of them were laid with years like the unseen drifting of uncounted snows; and they were speaking. And all their faces were bent to the throne that Forest faced, and lifting up his eyes to it he saw there seated a form more mighty and terrible than all the others. White hair like flowless snow wreathed him round, and his giant thews were old and hard as rocks, and of blue and red were his falling robes that flowed down his throne like streams of fire. His face, ancient and beautiful, looked as if the wisdom of the entire world had been cast into form and made a shape; and his eyes, level as any eagle’s, gleamed with a weary brightness. The giant castles of sound fell about his ears again, and Forest knew with a sudden clarity that burnt like fire who this ancient being was; and the knowledge knocked him spinning away like a leaf, and stars whirled and wheeled about him, and dreams took him.